I stopped mining awhile ago, but I've left my p2pool node up.  It's averaged 36 peers in the last year and it's bitcoind node is well connected.  It has a high speed internet connection and has had excellent uptime.

Is a node like mine actually helpful for p2pool?  I'm assuming that having a well connected node is good for spreading transactions and protecting p2pool from some kind of network attack.  Am I right, or is a non-mining node not helpful? It's just a git pull and a restart ever now and then, so it's not much effort.

If a non-mining node is helpful, is there anything else I can do to make it more useful?  Maybe set the max connections to something a lot higher so the pool sees more transactions?  I'm just guessing.